


Closed away

by swordandpen



Category: Knights of the Borrowed Dark Series - Dave Rudden
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 01:31:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15830985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordandpen/pseuds/swordandpen
Summary: not a full story, just a short attempt to imagine what the inside of Vivian's head might look like. spoilers, it's not cheerful. though not as bad as it could be.





	Closed away

**Author's Note:**

> Some spoilers for the first book only, Knights of the Borrowed Dark. Not the second, and definitely not the third since I can't read it in my country yet.

Malius Vivian Hardwick closed her door but did not sit. The only sounds were the usual strange ones from the house itself; everyone actually present was far away and busy. Vivian walked to the window. 

That she opened; it was high above street level, none of the accessibility to other people an open door would have allowed. She let the cold air hit her face. The window had screeched as it opened, and so she set to cleaning and oiling it. 

She would not regret sending her son to safety. She would not. But everything since then she’d seemed to do wrong. There wasn’t a right choice in all of it that she could see. 

At least he was awake and well enough now. But the thought just reminded her of the night before; it made things worse. 

She’d known it would hurt him – both his magic and her words. She’d hoped so, too, and that he’d blame her for all of it. Or, she’d told herself she hoped that. And that maybe he’d hate the danger and pain of the being a knight, as well. Keep away from the front lines for his whole life on the strength of his distrust of it and of her.

She hadn’t expected it to go that… well. The sight of her son actually collapsing had broken the back of her anger and left her with less comfortable feelings instead. Regret was something she had almost always managed to stave off despite the odds. Guilt and even shame weren’t regret – they couldn’t make her actually back away from a fight. They were just fuel for the fire. And reasons to keep good things, good people, safely away from the life she lived. 

Fear and guilt were familiar companions, despite what she allowed people to assume. That didn’t make them easy. Especially when they involved what she still had to do/deal with, not the past. The past could be boxed away. Denizen no longer was. 

Silently and smoothly, Malius Hardwick closed the window.


End file.
